Jim opens Chapter XXII (“How My Sea Adventure Began”) by describing the casualties of the recent action. Five of the pirates are dead, a sixth so badly wounded that he dies despite Dr. Livesey’s efforts to save him, and Hunter—with a fractured skull and broken ribs—will die that night without regaining consciousness. Captain Smollett is not fatally injured, but his wounds will keep him inactive for weeks. In the afternoon the doctor, heavily armed, sets out alone, and Jim tells Gray that he seems to be going to find Ben Gunn. Jim, cleaning the hot, bloody blockhouse, becomes disgusted and restless. Knowing he would never be given permission to go, he arms himself with two pistols and ammunition and leaves the stockade without asking. Avoiding the anchorage and the pirates’ camp, he walks until he can see the Hispaniola, with her pirates’ flag raised, still lying at anchor, and one of the gigs alongside. In the gig is Silver, talking with a couple of his men on shipboard. As the sun sets, Jim looks for and finds the rock Ben Gunn has mentioned, and near it Gunn’s awkward boat, homemade of goatskins stretched over a wooden frame, with a double paddle to propel it. Jim has seen Silver head for shore in the gig (see the following Commentary) and, knowing the ship and the men on it now have no boat, he makes up his mind to cut the Hispaniola adrift. After dark, in a fog that allows him to see only the pirates’ campfire ashore and the dim light from the ship’s cabin, Jim takes the goatskin boat to the water and sets it down.
Trying to navigate the tiny, lop-sided vessel is frustrating (Chapter XXIII, “The Ebb-Tide Runs”), but the quickly ebbing tide carries Jim to the ship, where he grabs the hawser, feeling it taut as the tide pulls the Hispaniola upon its anchor. When a puff of wind moves the vessel slightly, causing the hawser to slacken, he cuts all but two strands of the rope and waits for another breeze to slacken it again. And, as he waits, he hears the voices of two men in the cabin—Israel Hands and one other, who had been in the fight earlier that day. They are drunk and quarrelling loudly. Jim cuts through the rest of the hawser and the schooner begins to turn slowly, threatening to overturn his boat. Furiously, he paddles alongside to the ship’s stern, and then on impulse he grabs a line trailing from the ship and pulls his boat closer, until at last he can stand and look partially into the cabin through the stern window. There he sees Hands and the other man wrestling drunkenly but powerfully, each attempting to strangle the other. As he watches, the motion of the ship changes, and he perceives that it has been caught in the swiftly ebbing tide and is spinning toward the open sea. In a moment the two men aboard the Hispaniola discover, belatedly, the dangerous situation they are in and run on deck. Jim’s boat, caught in the wake, is drawn along with the ship, and Jim is sure he’ll be killed when the ship eventually hits the powerful breakers at the end of the narrows. He is powerless to do anything. He lies down in the boat and, despite (or perhaps because of) his fear, drifts into sleep.
In Chapter XXIV (“The Cruise of the Coracle”) Jim awakens after daylight and sees that he is floating in the little boat a quarter mile west off the southwestern end of Treasure Island, upon whose rocks and cliffs waves are breaking violently. He knows he’ll be unable to land there; moreover, he sees “monsters” lying on rocks and dropping into the sea—sea lions, he will later learn. Allowing the current to carry him northward along the shore—his attempts to paddle nearly capsize the boat—he finally discovers that he can slowly guide his “coracle” closer to shore, and he feels that soon he’ll be able to land. But, rounding a bend, he sees the Hispaniola a short distance away and is sure he’ll be seen and captured.
The ship is under sail but behaving strangely, moving back and forth in the current but getting nowhere, and Jim begins to wonder if the two men aboard are still drunk. Eventually he paddles toward the ship, which he now guesses may be deserted. But as he approaches it he realizes that he is in great danger, for now the schooner moves toward him, bow first. As a wave lifts him in his boat, he grabs the boom of the ship’s jib and hauls himself desperately up. A moment later the ship strikes and crushes the boat he has just left.
Hanging from the jib, which is swinging wildly, Jim catches the ship’s bowsprit, crawls along it, and then falls onto the deck (Chapter XXV, “I Strike the Jolly Roger”). Recovering, he sees no one at first, but then, with a swing of the mainsail, he sights Hands and the other man lying on the deck. The second man is obviously dead, sliding around as the ship bucks and jumps. Both men are surrounded with bloodstains, and Jim thinks they are both dead, but then Hands comes to himself, sees Jim, and mutters, “Brandy.” Jim gets brandy and some food for himself from the cabin, which has been plundered and wrecked. Hands is a little revived, and Jim, telling the erstwhile coxswain that he, Jim, is now in command, runs the pirate flag down and throws it overboard. Hands, wounded in the thigh, sees that he has no choice but to help Jim sail the ship to the North Inlet, for neither of them can do so on his own and Jim will not sail for the anchorage near which Silver is camped. They agree on this arrangement and set off. Jim is quite pleased with himself for all he has accomplished, but he notes that Hands is watching him strangely.
